George L. Carney Jr. is by turns modest and firmly confident — which is not unusual considering how far he’s come during the past 85 years.

“It takes a very unique person to run this kind of business,” he said, referring to Raynham Park.

When told he’d recently been voted Newsmaker of the Year by this newspaper’s staff, the Brockton native said he was “very honored.”

“It was a complete surprise,” Carney said, adding, “I always try to do the right thing.”

At an age when many other men and women are in the midst of retirement, Carney is looking ahead to the next phase of his career.

It was 1966 when he took ownership of what was still a thriving greyhound racing business.

His father, George Sr., and partner Russ Murray opened Raynham Greyhound Park in 1941. Carney eventually bought remaining stock, originally owned by his father, from another co-owner, Lou Smith.

Smith, a Russian immigrant who became a successful entrepreneur, was a greyhound heavyweight in New England. He was instrumental in getting a law passed in 1933 to legalize pari-mutuel betting in New Hampshire, where for years thereafter he ran Rockingham Park, a major employer and taxpayer in the Granite State.

The Raynham racing park also was a job-producer and generated significant tax revenue, both to the state and its host town. But business slowed as casinos opened in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

The curtain finally closed for good when greyhound racing became illegal in Massachusetts in 2010.

You can still bet on a race in Raynham, but all of the dogs and horses running their respective tracks are simulcast from other locations.

By the time lawmakers established the Expanded Gaming Act in 2011, Carney had jumped in to compete for what would be the sole slots parlor in the state.

While the city of Taunton pursued a resort casino with the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian tribe, Carney secured investment backing for a slot machine parlor that would be a boon, both in terms of job creation and revenue to the town and state.

Carney is all but convinced his 125-acre site at 1958 Broadway will be named by the state’s gaming commission as the Bay State’s sole legitimate slot parlor facility.

He recounted that in its heyday — with its live greyhound racing, restaurants and lounges — Raynham Park generated $1 million a year in revenue for the town and employed as many as 700 people.

His staff, he said, now numbers about 100.

He predicts as many as 1,700 full- and part-time jobs will be created once the slots parlor opens.

The state, meanwhile, stands to collect $25 million for a licensing fee and a projected $138 million annually from gross revenue ranging from $200 million to $300 million, Carney said. That leaves a 51-percent share for Carney and his backers.

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It’s estimated Raynham will collect at least $4 million per year, according to town officials.

“I’ve always been a supporter of expanded gaming at Raynham Park,” said Raynham Selectman Joseph Pacheco.

Pacheco said the combination of property, meal and other taxes and monetary “mitigation” compensation will account for the $4 million. He also said Carney is an ideal choice because of his longstanding local ties and regional roots.

Carney said he never doubted that Greenwood Racing Inc. was the best casino company he could have chosen as a partner for what is now a proposed $227 million slot-machine gambling facility.

“If they didn’t know what they were doing I wouldn’t be with them,” he said.

Before making the deal with Greenwood — whose Parx Casino and Racing in Bensalem is the biggest casino complex in Pennsylvania — Carney said he met with representatives of eight or nine other “top-flight” casino groups.

He said he appreciated the fact that Greenwood “understood the racing business.”

Carney got his start in greyhound racing when he was 14. He was paid $4 a day and $24 a week for chores including leading dogs out to the racetrack, at a time when he said school teachers earned between $18 and $22 a week.

When Raynham Greyhound Park was in full swing in the 1940s and beyond, it competed with Revere’s Wonderland Greyhound Park and the Taunton Dog Track on Route 44 near the Dighton line.

James J. Egan opened Taunton’s racetrack in 1935. He sold it four years later to Boston-based entrepreneur and philanthropist Joe Linsey — a Russian immigrant, who was both famous and slightly infamous, the latter for his Prohibition-era ties to Boston organized crime.

Linsey and his nephew Al Ross ran the track until it closed in December 1981. He sold his “racing dates” to Carney so that greyhound racing in Raynham became a year-round venture.

“We bought him out in the end,” Carney said.

From then on the Raynham Park was known as Raynham-Taunton Greyhound Park.

The Taunton site became a flea market business known as Taunton Expo. A fire leveled it in September 2001.

The skill of combining greyhounds, horses and legal betting became part of Carney’s psyche from an early age. He noted that at one time, his father at had a controlling interest in New Hampshire’s Rockingham Park.

In the 1960s, years after working as a young teenager at the Raynham dog track, Carney was appointed general manager of Suffolk Downs in East Boston.

Like his father before him, Carney has always had his hand in a variety of businesses.

For years, his dad owned and operated a large bar in Brockton called Sweeney’s. In 1957, Carney got involved in the Brockton Fairgrounds after successfully winning a proxy battle, at the behest of a Brockton businessman.

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“Over time they turned it over to me,” he said of the Brockton Fair.

He still owns the fairgrounds and plans to establish harness racing there once slots come to Raynham.

Carney said the races will be simulcast in Raynham, and he likes the idea of helping farmers and other people connected to the horse racing trade.

There are also two other business located in the parking lot of his dog track.

Patriot Recycling breaks down and recycles construction waste to create material used as road fill. There’s also a licensed transfer station called Earth Source Inc., which, for a fee, collects cooking grease and oil from restaurants.

His sons-in-law and four children all contribute to the family businesses, which also includes two Brockton liquor stores.

Carney said he has a “great relationship” with the city of Taunton and its DPW, notwithstanding the city’s own pursuit of a resort-style casino.

He said he pays more than $50,000 per year to the city to be able to dispose of the cooking oil, which eventually ends up in Taunton’s wastewater treatment plant.

He said he also pays Raynham $240,000 per year in “up-front fees” as part of the same agreements.

Before committing himself to working full-time in the gaming industry, Carney said when he was 16 he worked three years as a deckhand on yachts in Florida that sometimes stopped off in pre-Castro Cuba.

“It was an easy way of life; and I learned how to take care of myself,” he said.

He later joined the Navy and was an active reservist for six years, before working in his father’s bar.

Carney said in 1970 he was offered a chance to help run a Las Vegas casino. But he ultimately decided it wouldn’t be a good idea, commuting back and forth.

“I was committed to go, but I had four kids,” he said. “I didn’t want to get myself in trouble and end up not being married to the same wife.”

Carney said he owes a debt of gratitude to a handful of Brockton entrepreneurs, men he called “self-made millionaires,” who took a shining to him when he was a young man and offered him valuable job experience.

He singled out the late brothers Dewey and Jud Stone.

Dewey Stone, Carney noted, was instrumental in fundraising to establish the state of Israel. Stone also is the subject of a recent documentary.

Jud Stone, Carney said, became a probate court judge.

Carney said the Stones owned stock in Brockton Fairgrounds, and that it was they who hired him to represent their interests in the proxy case.

Carney also has fond memories of Lou Smith and Max Wind. Wind owned stock in the Brockton Fair business.

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With vacation homes in Jupiter, Fla. and North Falmouth, one might think Carney would sell his house in Brockton, where he and his wife Laetitia still reside.

“I paid $38,000 for it 40 years ago, and to me it still means a lot,” Carney said, adding that he’s told his wife “when I pass on she can move.”